Anti-Romney/Koch Brothers Demonstration Is An Epic Failure

David Koch held a fundraiser for Mitt Romney this afternoon at his home on Long Island. At this point in the election cycle, that’s how the candidates are spending much of their time–attending fundraisers. But leftists thought they could make some hay out of connecting Romney to the Koch brothers, perhaps because they assume, wrongly, that most people share their detestation of the Kochs. So for some weeks, a consortium of left-wing groups including MoveOn.org, Occupy Wall Street, the Long Island Progressive Coalition, Greenpeace, Strong For All, United New York, the Teamsters Union and others have been urging their members and supporters to turn out for a protest at David Koch’s home. This “invitation” by the Occupy movement was one of many that went out to liberals across the country. The event’s Facebook page is here. The most recent entries are pretty funny:

So, what if the Left gave a party and no one came? That is pretty much what happened today. Here the protesters are assembling to heckle drivers on the road to Koch’s home:

The Buzzfeed reporter who took the photo counted eight protesters. The Teamsters Union tried to make the best of it, headlining Protesters arrive at Koch party for Romney. As time went on, a few more joined in. This is what the long-awaited protest looked like at its peak:

That would be a pretty good turnout for a softball game. Newsday estimated the “crowd” at 100. An Occupier estimated the crowd at 150, while local law enforcement gave CNN a generous estimate of 200 protesters.

That is a pathetic showing. The average high school graduation party attracts more people than that. Remember when MoveOn was considered a potent political force? When Occupy was being touted as the equal of the Tea Party? When Greenpeace amounted to something, and the Teamsters Union at least had the ability to turn out lots of goons? Those days are long gone.

The leftists hired an airplane to fly overhead with a banner that said “Romney has a Koch problem.” How clever. The protesters cheered briefly, but then the airplane flew away and reappeared with a banner that said Lacoste L!ve. Free enterprise triumphs once again.

Left unexplained is why the protesters, who claim to be aggrieved by “money in politics,” have no problem with Barack Obama’s fundraisers with Anna Wintour, George Clooney, and what’s-her-name the actress, and don’t object to the fact that as of 2008, Obama was the greatest money-machine in the history of politics. Maybe they are just hypocrites. Is there any other possible explanation?

The demonstration was a washout, but if you followed it online it was even worse. The lefties used the Twitter hash tag #kochparty, but as usual, they were more or less swamped by conservative ridicule. Worse, perhaps, Tostitos bought the top tweet on their page, presumably because the word “party” was included in the hash tag. So the Twitter feed typically looked like this:

The usual hatefulness was on display as liberals spewed their venom on the #kochparty feed:

Why is it that this vileness from the Left, which we see every day, goes almost completely unreported on?

So the demonstration was a washout. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing to be learned from it. On the contrary, the event illustrates how closely intertwined the “respectable” Left (i.e., the Democratic Party) has become with the disreputable, and often outright criminal, Left. Who, exactly, organized the Romney/Koch protest? The principal organizers were Andy Stepanian of Sparrow Media, Aaron Black of Occupy New York and Laura Dawn, Creative Director of MoveOn.org. Let’s focus on Stepanian, who said on Facebook that The Sparrow Project (i.e., Stepanian) is “coordinating PR around this Hamptons action.”

In normal times, one would expect a mainstream political party to distance itself from self-described terrorists like Andy Stepanian and raw anti-Semites like “OccupyGay.” But these are not ordinary times. The Obama re-election campaign has coordinated with today’s demonstrators and is trying to raise money by echoing their themes:

These are the times we live in. Are smears against law-abiding Americans who have created tens of thousands of jobs coming from a convicted terrorist, or from the President of the United States? It is hard to tell; one is a mouthpiece for the other.